Very few of the criticisms of the game I've heard had anything to do with the game engine, as I recall. The criticisms I heard (just like I didn't need to see Water World, I felt I was ready to learn from other people's pain and never played it) were that the gameplay was tedious and uninspiring, the plot meandering and silly, and the game itself buggy.
After all, what are two of the most popular and critically acclaimed games of the past 2 years? The Sims and GTA, neither of which could be said to be bleeding edge in terms of grapbics technology.
In fact, there are many innovative games that aren't good, and some excellent games that aren't innovative.
Some of the best films are great because of strong plots, excellent storytelling, and good cinematography, without breaking any new ground. Is there anything really innovative about Ang Lee? Steven Soderbergh? Not really, but they utilize existing techniques well, and know their craft.
Same with games. It doesn't look like Doom III is going to break any new ground - just do a lot of things that were done before, better. But they are the *right* things - suspense, atmosphere, art.
Price-fixing is an imposition by a manufacturer on its channel. It's anti-free-trade in that it prohibits different channel partners from pricing competitively.
I'm waiting to read about the first haptic murder. Would a phantom knife cut?
Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!
on
Saddam's Inbox Hacked
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· Score: 3, Informative
Women are freer in Kuwait than in Saudi Arabia (talk about lowering the bar!), but still less than they are in Iraq, or even Iran (where women can and do vote and participate in the political sphere and hold office, even if they still have a very conservative dress code.)
Kuwait's biggest political problem is its failure to provide basic civil and political rights for the majority of its residents, of course - the majority of residents are non-Kuwaiti "guest workers".
Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!
on
Saddam's Inbox Hacked
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I can't stand Bush, but Bush is no Saddam. Saddam is a murderous thug, a gangster whose gang controls a country. It's as if Tony Soprano ran a country, but with fewer moral qualms. I don't think the US should be rattling its sabres and I don't think another war is warranted, but Saddam is still an asshole of the widest caliber.
That said, Iraq is probably the only Arab country where women can wear whatever they want, fully participate in political life (well, to the same limited, oppressed amount the men can, anyway) and have full legal equality in both professional and personal domains. It's better to be a woman in Iraq than to be one in Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait, or even Egypt. To some extent, that's due to the nature of the Baath party's platform, and also to the fact that Saddam is a very secular thug.
If you've ever seen Edward Tufte's canned speech, he partially attributes the event to an inability of the engineers involved to organize and present their information in a clear way to communicate the nature of the problem.
True that. But if it were proprietary software, it would spend the first 3 years of that 10 years in closed development, have what would be the 0.2 release as 1.0, and what the free version would have called 1.0 would be called Release 6 Service Pack 5.
The reason why some companies will ask for regulation is that they are in a situation in which the market, by itself, will reward unethical behavior. So, by asking for a regulatory standard, those who do not wish to engage in that unethical behavior will not have to suffer competitively for their ethics. This is why the first and loudest cries for legislation against child labor in 19th century England came from factory owners, who wanted to end the practice in their own factories, but couldn't do so as long as their competitors were engaging in it.
If you view those statistics for legal immigration in light of the existing populations of those countries, Australia has a more open door than the US does. Besides, the original post referred to Southeast Asia - the "leaky boat" scenario - which was a phenomena during the epoch of the killing fields, but not now, so recent statistics are besides the point.
Incidentally, 70,000 of the Asian immigrants are from India, the 2nd largest source of immigration into the US (after Mexico.) The statistic for immigration includes temporary workers who are given adjustments of status to permanent residency, and thus may reflect change of status for the many H1-B workers (200,000 are admitted a year) in the US.
They haven't done so in a long time, and many of the ones who did also go to Australia (destination number 1), Canada, Europe and Japan, and many of the ones who came the US relatives who were here, or fought with the US military and expected some appropriate welcome.
(The fact that the site's hosted out of France might give you a hint which way they might lean.)
If you are assuming that they lean left because they are European - an exceptionally questionable logical leap I see many Americans making - how do you account for the fact that Cuba appears on the list far, far below most every other Latin American country?
And what ideological bias can we presume from a site hosted in the US?
Your objection have been answered elsewhere - specifically that the "crossing security lines" charge is a great way from paralyzing any investigation of any governmental activity, and that the right of a journalist to protect their source is an essential tenet in the freedom of the press. ("our legal system is still working" indeed, what a crock.)
Because the Mexico/US border is the most economically disequal border in the entire world, *that's* why. And the poor, undocumented immigrants are unlikely to book air travel to Canada or Europe.
That is a bullshit line. Even if someone had nothing but contempt for the country they lived in, they'd have every right to live in it *and* complain about it. People don't just "shop" for the countries they live in like you seem to suggest they do: often, it's proximity to friends and families that ultimately makes decisions like that.
Despite the widespread myth to the country, a lot of artists don't have a single unified vision. He could very well see things worthwhile in both versions: he could appreciate the more streamlined, focus aspect of the theatrical release and the more extensive coverage in the DVD release. It's both/and, not either/or.
Really, the corporate CEO and the tree-hugger want the same things
That is not true. The corporate CEO wants profits, and will be selective about their globalism as long as it protects profits. They will gladly accept subsidies to save their asses - in steel, the airline industry, agribusiness - while providing lip service to an open market. They are happy to enjoy all the benefits of government intervention to ensure their immediate profitability. And, since corporate money bankrolls the political process, what is in the interests of the government is usually what is in the interests of the CEO. The tree-hugger wants the prosperity of the 3rd world (and may not always be clear how to do that).
I want to point out one little irony: you are pretty much saying that it's wrong to say that man and women comprehend things differently, but that I'm not comprehending it because I'm male...
I view the relationship between biological gender and social/cultural/historical gender as seeing being gendered as equivalent to being drugged with one or another drugs. Hormones - androgens, estrogens, and the lot - are drugs, and people who are on certain drugs will resemble each other in behavior in certain ways. The mild paranoia of one pot-head will be different than that of another, but generally you can tell the difference between a pot-head and a speed freak.
Talking about rape is a digression and a bit of a red herring (and invoking penis-waving is just a bit - juvenile.) There's no question that women feel powerless, too - however, the exercise, domain, and response to that powerlessness, and the specific structure of that experience, is still different. And that difference is reflected in the cultural products that women are more likely to consume.
Often - usually - it is invisible to you, because it's part of the background of the economy, but government intervention is the foundation of our economic prosperity.
Currency. The transportation infrastructure. Public education. The rule of law. Labor benefits that turn a huge sector of the population into consumers, who otherwise might only be living on a near-subsistence level.
The last point speaks to the nature of the usefulness of laws like the ADA. It's a reverse case of the tragedy of the commons. Without some sort of mandate for accessibility, any individual business could save money by not having to employ the handicap when it would have even a minor cost to do so (why build a ramp to access the workplace when you can hire someone else who can do the job who doesn't need one, even if the job doesn't require two legs?) and likewise, they could save money by not marketing to the handicapped (why spend money on marketing to a population that doesn't have good jobs to begin with?). This creates a vicious circle - the handicapped are eligible for fewer jobs, which decreases their buying power, which makes marketing to them less attractive; and certain types of consumption - particularly in education - help one become more productive to begin with.
So the legislation breaks that cycle by saying that reasonable accomodation must be made. Any individual business may find that an inconvenience, but the *net* effect is a more productive society, and an entire population that can prosper in it that otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Because I suspect Nintendo will be selling content for the Playstation and Xbox. I expect it to do a "Sega" soon, staying in hardware only for the GameBoy line.
Slashdot Mirror
After all, what are two of the most popular and critically acclaimed games of the past 2 years? The Sims and GTA, neither of which could be said to be bleeding edge in terms of grapbics technology.
Some of the best films are great because of strong plots, excellent storytelling, and good cinematography, without breaking any new ground. Is there anything really innovative about Ang Lee? Steven Soderbergh? Not really, but they utilize existing techniques well, and know their craft.
Same with games. It doesn't look like Doom III is going to break any new ground - just do a lot of things that were done before, better. But they are the *right* things - suspense, atmosphere, art.
Price-fixing is an imposition by a manufacturer on its channel. It's anti-free-trade in that it prohibits different channel partners from pricing competitively.
No need to gild the lily, as it were.
I'm waiting to read about the first haptic murder. Would a phantom knife cut?
Kuwait's biggest political problem is its failure to provide basic civil and political rights for the majority of its residents, of course - the majority of residents are non-Kuwaiti "guest workers".
That said, Iraq is probably the only Arab country where women can wear whatever they want, fully participate in political life (well, to the same limited, oppressed amount the men can, anyway) and have full legal equality in both professional and personal domains. It's better to be a woman in Iraq than to be one in Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait, or even Egypt. To some extent, that's due to the nature of the Baath party's platform, and also to the fact that Saddam is a very secular thug.
If you've ever seen Edward Tufte's canned speech, he partially attributes the event to an inability of the engineers involved to organize and present their information in a clear way to communicate the nature of the problem.
True that. But if it were proprietary software, it would spend the first 3 years of that 10 years in closed development, have what would be the 0.2 release as 1.0, and what the free version would have called 1.0 would be called Release 6 Service Pack 5.
The correct response is: What the fuck were you thinking, mister glue-sniffing moron?
cf. tragedy of the commons.
The reason why some companies will ask for regulation is that they are in a situation in which the market, by itself, will reward unethical behavior. So, by asking for a regulatory standard, those who do not wish to engage in that unethical behavior will not have to suffer competitively for their ethics. This is why the first and loudest cries for legislation against child labor in 19th century England came from factory owners, who wanted to end the practice in their own factories, but couldn't do so as long as their competitors were engaging in it.
Incidentally, 70,000 of the Asian immigrants are from India, the 2nd largest source of immigration into the US (after Mexico.) The statistic for immigration includes temporary workers who are given adjustments of status to permanent residency, and thus may reflect change of status for the many H1-B workers (200,000 are admitted a year) in the US.
They haven't done so in a long time, and many of the ones who did also go to Australia (destination number 1), Canada, Europe and Japan, and many of the ones who came the US relatives who were here, or fought with the US military and expected some appropriate welcome.
If you are assuming that they lean left because they are European - an exceptionally questionable logical leap I see many Americans making - how do you account for the fact that Cuba appears on the list far, far below most every other Latin American country?
And what ideological bias can we presume from a site hosted in the US?
Your objection have been answered elsewhere - specifically that the "crossing security lines" charge is a great way from paralyzing any investigation of any governmental activity, and that the right of a journalist to protect their source is an essential tenet in the freedom of the press. ("our legal system is still working" indeed, what a crock.)
Because the Mexico/US border is the most economically disequal border in the entire world, *that's* why. And the poor, undocumented immigrants are unlikely to book air travel to Canada or Europe.
That is a bullshit line. Even if someone had nothing but contempt for the country they lived in, they'd have every right to live in it *and* complain about it. People don't just "shop" for the countries they live in like you seem to suggest they do: often, it's proximity to friends and families that ultimately makes decisions like that.
Erm. s/country/contrary/
Despite the widespread myth to the country, a lot of artists don't have a single unified vision. He could very well see things worthwhile in both versions: he could appreciate the more streamlined, focus aspect of the theatrical release and the more extensive coverage in the DVD release. It's both/and, not either/or.
Oh, so you've been to Telluride, too...
That little tidbit is the reason why I've cut my movie-going in half.
That is not true. The corporate CEO wants profits, and will be selective about their globalism as long as it protects profits. They will gladly accept subsidies to save their asses - in steel, the airline industry, agribusiness - while providing lip service to an open market. They are happy to enjoy all the benefits of government intervention to ensure their immediate profitability. And, since corporate money bankrolls the political process, what is in the interests of the government is usually what is in the interests of the CEO. The tree-hugger wants the prosperity of the 3rd world (and may not always be clear how to do that).
I view the relationship between biological gender and social/cultural/historical gender as seeing being gendered as equivalent to being drugged with one or another drugs. Hormones - androgens, estrogens, and the lot - are drugs, and people who are on certain drugs will resemble each other in behavior in certain ways. The mild paranoia of one pot-head will be different than that of another, but generally you can tell the difference between a pot-head and a speed freak.
Talking about rape is a digression and a bit of a red herring (and invoking penis-waving is just a bit - juvenile.) There's no question that women feel powerless, too - however, the exercise, domain, and response to that powerlessness, and the specific structure of that experience, is still different. And that difference is reflected in the cultural products that women are more likely to consume.
Currency. The transportation infrastructure. Public education. The rule of law. Labor benefits that turn a huge sector of the population into consumers, who otherwise might only be living on a near-subsistence level.
The last point speaks to the nature of the usefulness of laws like the ADA. It's a reverse case of the tragedy of the commons. Without some sort of mandate for accessibility, any individual business could save money by not having to employ the handicap when it would have even a minor cost to do so (why build a ramp to access the workplace when you can hire someone else who can do the job who doesn't need one, even if the job doesn't require two legs?) and likewise, they could save money by not marketing to the handicapped (why spend money on marketing to a population that doesn't have good jobs to begin with?). This creates a vicious circle - the handicapped are eligible for fewer jobs, which decreases their buying power, which makes marketing to them less attractive; and certain types of consumption - particularly in education - help one become more productive to begin with.
So the legislation breaks that cycle by saying that reasonable accomodation must be made. Any individual business may find that an inconvenience, but the *net* effect is a more productive society, and an entire population that can prosper in it that otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Because I suspect Nintendo will be selling content for the Playstation and Xbox. I expect it to do a "Sega" soon, staying in hardware only for the GameBoy line.